A radar device is an apparatus for detecting distant objects by means of electromagnetic radiation emitted by the radar device and reflected by the distant objects. The electromagnetic radiation may, for instance, be in a frequency range of more than one gigahertz. Today, an ever increasing number of street vehicles comprise a radar device for detecting obstacles that may pose a potential threat to the vehicle. The electromagnetic radiation emitted by the radar device may also be referred to as the radar wave. An object to be detected by the radar device may also be referred to as a target. Different types of radar devices are known in the art. These include range Doppler devices, beam forming devices, and combined range Doppler and beam forming devices. Range detection serves to determine the distance between the radar device and a target based on the delay between emission of a radar pulse and reception of a reflected part of the radar pulse. Doppler detection serves to determine the relative speed between the radar device and the target based on the Doppler effect. Beam forming can be used, for example, to determine an azimuth of the target or for direction-sensitive detection.
Part of the electromagnetic radiation emitted by the radar device may be backscattered to the radar device and evaluated to generate a two-dimensional or three-dimensional array of real or complex numbers representative of the detected backscattered radar wave. This data may be derived from the output signals generated by a set of reception antennas in response to the received backscattered radar wave, and it may therefore be referred to herein as the reception data. The reception data, i.e., a two-dimensional or three dimensional matrix, may be secondary reception data generated from primary reception data by, e.g., a two-dimensional or three-dimensional Fourier transform.
The positions of targets in an environment of the radar device may be found by determining local maxima (peaks) in the two-dimensional or three-dimensional array of reception data. The coordinates of the peaks may have to be extracted from large amounts of data. Searching for peaks may be computationally intensive and may account for most of the processing time in a radar system. An efficient algorithm and a high throughput implementation may therefore be desired. It may further be desired to store the coordinates of the peaks in an efficient manner in order to save memory.